A Magnifying Glass

Last week was busy because my mom had to have surgery. She had several ulcers in her intestines, which had been causing her severe pain. The surgery went well and she's now home recuperating. The issue, though, was who would take care of my dad while she was in the hospital. My three sisters and I tried to divide it up evenly. I had him at my house during the day. It's been a long while since I've spent this much time with him and I am amazed at how much he has deteriorated. He hardly talks at all anymore, and when you ask him a question he'll almost always answer "no" before he can figure out what he really wants to say. He did have a few very lucid moments when he asked me some astonishing questions. It's hard to grasp how he couldn't understand what I meant when I asked him if he was warm enough in the car, but yet he could ask me about things that happened more than 16 years ago. We even had a couple of conversations about his disease. It was an enlightening few days, during which I came to understand a little bit of what my mom feels as the main caregiver, I realized (again) how badly I failed at really listening to him before, and I had reinforced the importance of recording my stories and my children's.

But I also had a few "ah ha" moments that related directly to me and how I live my life. I hope I never have to really understand how it feels to have Alzheimer's, but one of the images I have in my head is that it is something like looking through a telescope backwards. Everything is too small, hard to see and understand, even though it's all right there before you. Experiencing the disease from the other side of the telescope, though, it is more like being underneath a magnifying glass. It catches everything in its power and makes it larger. This was a week of plenty of family drama, and suddenly all our foibles and weaknesses and issues seem enormous to me. Alcoholism, procrastination, marriage troubles, selfishness, fear, money problems, and just the everyday issues of trying to live a normal life: these all seemed magnified that week.

So this week, I am trying to do something with that magnification. The thing about seeing things larger than life is that you can examine them more closely. In particular, having seen procrastination and its effects in the lives of some of my family members (I am being vague and not naming names so as to not hurt anyone's feelings), I can recognize my own affinity for it. I have this glimmer of self-understanding, of how I use the small, daily things in life---things like housework and laundry, and even good things like being with my kids, or spending time with Kendell, or scrapbooking---as excuses for avoiding the real work I tell myself I want to do but just never get around to.

Really: my dad is miserable. There isn't much we can do to help him, aside from small kindnesses like meals and companionship and photographs (he really does love looking at pictures). He is stuck on the wrong side of a telescope, and I am helpless to free him. But I am filled with determination to at least learn from his experiences---to make of this life that he gave me something good and strong and lasting. Maybe that's the only thing I can do in the glass I am stuck under. No more just thinking---it is time to act.

Comments

[Liz Ness]

HUGS to you, Amy! It is so hard to move forward sometimes, to overcome, to accept. Best wishes to you as you step forward into change!

[Jennifer Reynard]

I have just been reading your recent post, and caught up with a few others, including the one about cleaning out our Scrapbook supplies. Your stories are very powerful and really make a person stop and think! I plan to go back and print all your posts and put them in a binder, not glamorous, but good enough for me to refer back to you.
Thank you so much for taking the time to be real and share your innermost thoughts. You should be applauded!
Jennifer Reynard
Calgary, Alberta, Canada